1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to tape cartridges containing medium auxiliary memory devices wherein at least a moniker related to an encryption key can be maintained.
2. Description of Related Art
The data storage industry is experiencing a boom fueled in part by aggressive cost reduction of data storage due to advances in storage technology, broadened international accessibility to the internet and the World Wide Web and the public's appetite to accumulate data. Unfortunately, with the boom has come associated undesirable activities, such as data attacks and data theft. Data stored in data storage libraries are among the primary targets of such attacks and theft.
Data storage libraries serve as data receptacles for a variety of clients including businesses, governments and the general population. These libraries are generally comprised of tape drives adapted to read and write user data to and from tape cartridges which can be archived within outside of the libraries. FIG. 1A shows an example of a contemporary tape cartridge 150 currently being used in many of the mainstream storage libraries. As illustratively shown, the tape cartridge 150 generally comprises tape medium 152 and in some cases, a Medium Auxiliary Memory (MAM) 154, shown here in dashed lines because the MAM 154 and tape medium 152 reside in the interior of the cartridge 150. The MAM 154, as shown in FIG. 1B, fundamentally comprises an integrated circuit that includes solid state memory and a transponder 166 attached to an antenna 168, the antenna is typically a small coil of wires. The MAM 154 is considered a passive device because it is energized when subjected to a strong enough RF field produced by a MAM-reader. Information, such as tape cartridge serial number and load count, can be transmitted between the MAM 154 and the MAM-reader via a specific radio frequency. MAMs 154 can cut data access time down to a fraction from historical techniques which require reading key parameter information directly from the tape medium 152. One advantage of a tape cartridge 150 is mobility providing archive ability in remote locations called “vaults” making an “on-line” data attack difficult, if not impossible. However, should an attacker acquire a tape cartridge, the data stored on the tape medium 152 or the associated MAM 154 may be subject to unwanted access. In attempts to prevent unwanted access, a tape cartridge, or other mobile media capable of being used in a data storage library, can be armed with a number of security measures including data encryption. One fundamental component of data encryption is knowledge of how to decode or decrypt the data; such knowledge is known to those skilled in the art as the key. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to prevent the key from falling into the hands of someone attempting to access the encrypted data without authorization.
In an effort to improve managing encrypted data on mobile media (within a library or vault, for example) while using full capability of a tape cartridge, such as the cartridge 150, both methods and apparatus are disclosed herein. It is to innovations related to this subject matter that the claimed invention is generally directed.